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Ancient Sex Curse Revealed: May Your Penis Hurt When You Make Love!

Curse tablets in the ancient world are like Facebook posts today—they were everywhere, created by almost everyone, and can still be found in the strangest of places. They could be broadly vague or incredibly specific; they could be politically, economically, or emotionally driven. They could be simple requests for vengeance or complex strategies for pain and suffering. Curse tablets were the slam-books of ancient Greece and Rome.

The ‘Simple’ Penis Curse

One such instance of a narrowly specific curse is what has simply been called the Penis Curse from the kingdom of Amathus in Cyprus: "May your penis hurt when you make love." In conjunction with this inscription that leaves little to the imagination is an image of a man holding what scholars have claimed is an hourglass in his right hand.

Though the reason for the curse and the choice of imagery have yet to be ascertained due to a lack of further comprehensible evidence, the location of the find seems oddly fitting. Cyprus, where "archeologists found a curse…on a lead tablet", loosely dated back to the 7th century AD in 2008, has long been associated with lusty endeavors. One of the primary cults of Aphrodite/Venus was on this island, and the wife of the ecstatically charged Dionysus/Bacchus shared one particular cult with Aphrodite at Amathus itself. Taking these factors into consideration, a penis curse at Cyprus seems almost anticlimactic.

What appears unusual and most interesting about this curse tablet may not be its existence, but the date that has been ascribed to it. The century in question, 7th century AD, is a period which would have coincided with the rise of Christianity in the east. The aforementioned common supernatural curses would not have been nearly as common as they were during the height of Classical Greece and subsequent periods of the Roman Republic and pre-Christian Empire. In fact, in relation to the lifetime of the city, founded in 1500 BC by the Phoenicians, the 7th century is nearing the end of its reign. The discovery of the penis curse tablet is one of the more interesting finds of Amathus' later existence.

Curses in Pre-Christian Greece and Rome

The French scholar Pierre Aubert, who heads the Archaeological School at Athens, theorizes that the artifact indicates a cult of witchcraft at Amathus or a surviving group of pagans. Amathus was definitively, unquestionably Christian in the 7th century, so the professor's assumption is not unlikely. Particularly as many ancient sites retained their pre-Christian roots in some form (surviving architecture, sculpture, oral legends, etc.), one can easily imagine a scorned lover attempting to call on the old gods to take care of a problem of which the Christian god might not approve.

Ruins of the ancient city of Amathus, Cyprus. (Bayreuth2009/ CC BY 3.0 )

The curse itself fits quite neatly into the pre-Christian religious culture of ancient Greece and Rome. The oldest tablets found so far date back to the 5th century BC, though there are likely undiscovered finds going back even further. Greece was particularly known for the tradition, passing it into Roman culture as they were absorbed by the Republic and Empire; evidence further abounds from the Roman provinces, most notably in Britain.

Opisthographic defixio tabella (curse tablet) with magic signs on one side and a Latin / Greek inscription of doubtful meaning on the other side. Origin unknown. ( Public Domain )

Curse tablets were, with little to no doubt, quite common. They could be as specific or vague as the curser chose, and were as often inscribed with simple requests for death or unnamed vengeance as for specific instructions (as seen with the aforementioned Penis Curse):

The Gods Invoked

Most ancient Greek/Roman curse tablets invoked a chthonic deity, such as Persephone, Hades, or Hermes, however it was also highly common for gods of other cultures to be summoned in conjunction or in place of these gods and goddesses.

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Riley Winters

Riley Winters is a recent graduate from Christopher Newport University with a degree in Classical Studies and Art History and a Medieval and Renaissance Studies minor She will be attending the University of Glasgow in for Celtic and Viking Archaeology... Read More

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